In the business education industry, traditional educational tools have often been presented in the form of games, books, manuals, and self-instructional tapes. These methods usually fall short of supplying the user with a thorough understanding of the material being presented, due to the repetitive, common-place nature of the medium in which it is presented. Boredom is usually the result. While games have been proposed as a means to educate and train those in a particular business discipline, they have often fallen short of the mark due to the elements of luck and limited scope of the game. Books, manuals, and instructional tapes all provide adequate means to educate, but these traditional methods often remind the user of conventional modes of learning associated with formal schooling, leading to preconceived notions of anxiety, indifference, and intimidation. There is therefore a need in the industry for an effective educational system covering a variety of business disciplines, and utilizing a method that can allow students and professionals in the industry to quickly and easily acquire and sharpen their business skills.
Previous attempts have been made to provide an educational method or apparatus designed to teach business skills such as are described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,607,309 to Finn (the '309 patent); U.S. Pat. No. 5,056,792 to Helwig-Larsen et al. (the '792 patent); U.S. Pat. No. 4,363,628 to Kirkpatrick et al. (the '628 patent); U.S. Pat. No. 4,109,918 to Mele et al.(the '918 patent); U.S. Pat. No. 4,008,527 to Zegel (the '527 patent); U.S. Pat. No. 3,719,801 to Drexler (the '801 patent); U.S. Pat. No. 2,322,113 to Connelly (the '113 patent); U.S. Pat. No. 2,230,699 to Schulze (the '699 patent); U.S. Pat. No. 1,587,391 to Mckee (the '391 patent); and U.S. Pat. No. 1,516,798 to Striker (the '798 patent), all of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The '309 patent describes an instructional apparatus and method for teaching data collection and analysis. The instructional method involves collecting and recording the collectable data, translating the data to show patterns in the data, and interpreting the data patterns.
The '792 patent describes a business education model simulating the running of a company. A game board is used representing business premises and tokens are used to represent values of raw materials and goods, each value represented by a different color.
The '628 patent describes a device and method of training bank personnel by simulating bank procedures. Game board instructions direct players to stacks of question and answer cards. Chance means such as dice and another of marking a player's position on the board are utilized.
The '918 patent describes a learning and earning educational game utilizing a game board with zones that each represent a different discipline of learning, a roulette-type spinning wheel directing players around the board, and question and answer cards. Financial instruments are also included such as play money, bonds, and checks.
The '527 patent discloses a teaching aid for demonstrating the rudimentary principles of double-entry accounting. Transaction cards having windows and accounting indicia of varying colors or designs are used in conjunction with two rotatably attached disks and with numerals. The disks and can be rotated by hand to display different numerals through the windows and the entire assembly can be posted in various ledger pages.
The '801 patent describes a selection and correlation apparatus utilizing transaction cards with accounting indicia thereon representing part of an accounting entry. Item cards with symbols representing different securities and quality cards with windows that overlay the item card to allow certain symbols to show through are utilized. If a particular security meets the qualifications of the quality card, its corresponding symbol will appear through the window. The apparatus can be used to select and analyze items such as securities, relationships between temperature and humidity, and the like.
The '113 patent describes a card game which assists those in the sales industry to better sell their products. Different categories of cards, such as decision cards, which indicate the decisions normally made when selling or purchasing a product or service, objection cards indicating obstacles standing in the way of a sale, and answer cards corresponding to ways in which the obstacles can be overcome, are dealt to the players who make decisions according to their respective cards whether or not they should follow through with the purchase of a particular product or service.
The '699 patent describes a game board using tokens representing money to be used as a means to budget a family's income in lieu of traditional bookkeeping.
The '391 patent discloses an accounting game comprised of ledger sheets bearing accounting indicia, namely debits and credits, and cards bearing similar indicia corresponding to the indicia on the ledger sheets, allowing players to attempt to develop and balance a commercial account.
The '798 patent discloses a game apparatus which simulates the buying and selling of commodities and is comprised of a deck of cards each of which represents different raw materials, manufactured articles, and margins of profit.
In addition to the above patents, "The Creative Edge" is another attempt to provide an educational method or apparatus designed to teach business skills. This publication, incorporated herein by reference, utilizes acronyms as a device to describe different business skills; however, it does not use additional techniques such as color schemes, matching suffixes, sketches that are specifically designed to portray the business discipline described by the letter of the acronym, or cards which allow for a modular rather than linear system of learning.
Other publications, such as "THINKPAK" and "Creative WhackPack", also incorporated herein by reference, also describe attempts to educate business people. "THINKPAK" is a deck of cards designed to assist users in problem solving. It uses only one acronym, namely "SCAMPERR", which is a principle of learning. It does not, however, use sketches, only mere abstract designs, nor does it use similar sounding suffixes, or a plurality of acronyms, all of which more clearly educate business people. "Creative WhackPack" uses pictures and text to help the user increase creativity, but does not incorporate acronyms or color schemes.
None of the previous efforts mentioned above either alone or in conjunction, describes an interactive modular educational system teaching business skills utilizing cards, color schemes, sketches, and suffixes.
Consequently, there is a need in the art for an interactive modular educational system to allow users to learn fundamental business principles in an easy-to-understand manner, and more importantly to allow users to remember these principles by associating important business techniques and hints with specific colors, sketches, and easy-to-remember acronyms.
There is a further need in the art for an educational system that can be used as a system, in particular a modular system, capable of being used sequentially (in order), modularly (by segments), or randomly (mixing cards from different business disciplines).
There is a further need in the art for an educational system which allows the users, if they prefer, to learn only a segment of a business discipline, or to learn several different disciplines without spending unnecessary time as you would playing an entire game.